Sleepy Hollow miraculously pulled off a Season 4 renewal and Fox's president explains how it happened.
Sleepy Hollow seems to have a kind of resilience that’s apropos to its supernatural themes. At the end of Season 3, the ratings-declining series killed off the character of its main co-star Nicole Beharie with a somewhat definitive denouement, creating the assumption that the normally cancel-happy Fox brass used that moment as a dignified end for the once-mighty show. – Then, shockingly, the Season 4 renewal came, with promises of a restructured format and a later-announced new co-star in Janina Gavankar. Now, a prominent member of said Fox brass explains their logic.
At the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Fox entertainment president David Madden revealed the mindset behind this most surprising of reprieves for Sleepy Hollow. It certainly wasn’t an easy decision, especially with so many downsides to consider with Tom Mison’s lost-in-time Colnonial-era-sent slayer of the supernatural Ichabod Crane seemingly left with little purpose. As Madden explains of the state of the series after the exit of Beharie’s Abbie Mills:
“This was obviously a very hard conversation. Crane and Abbie were the spine of the show in a lot of ways, so it was difficult to figure out if it was right thing to do, to continue or not. But the producers pitched us an array of new characters and new situations for Crane to get into.”
Presumably, the ideas pitched by the producers were intriguing enough to make Madden and the rest of the Fox brass take note and consider the formerly buzz-heavy Sleepy Hollow– undoubtedly damaged by multiple seasons of sloppily executed storylines and sagging ratings – as a budget-heavy branding that is still worth salvaging. The oft-discussed upcoming overhaul of the series – migrating the show’s setting away from its titular small New York town to Washington D.C. – was pitched to Fox execs, as were the initial scripts. As Madden explains:
“The first seven scripts are really fun. We think there’s a lot of good new stories to tell.”
Thus, Sleepy Hollow will get another chance with Season 4 to recapture, nay, reinvent its unique take on a tried and true partnership formula with former True Blood star Janina Gavankar as Diana, the new hot-headed badge with whom Tom Mison’s Ichabod Crane will partner, battling supernatural threats and occasionally each other, since she happens to be a staunch skeptic. Former Lost fan favorite Jeremy Davies has also jumped onboard as a villain, playing a malevolent tech mogul named Malcom Dreyfuss. Additionally, cross-genre Fox network synergy will see Masterchef Junior contestant Oona Yaffe join the series to play Diana’s daughter Molly Thomas.
As for former star Nicole Beharie, she’s recently jumped aboard a film remake of Jacob’s Ladder. However, showrunner Clifton Campbell hinted after the airing of the April Season 3 finale that, despite her character Abbie Mills being “gone,” that Beharie could still return for guest spots – intriguingly enough, just not as Abbie Mills. Consequently, the pitch that apparently so intrigued the big brass at Fox may very well have involved a unique manifestation of Nicole Beharie’s former Abbie Mills character, potentially reinvented as someone (or something) else for sporadic spots in Season 4.
Sleepy Hollow will make its expectations-defying return on Fox sometime in early 2017.
